Mike and Dee Riley: ‘It was a true love story’

Mike Riley addresses friends and family members who attended the Thursday memorial service of wife Dee, who died on June 22

Updated 7/13/2024 5:15 PM

CORVALLIS — Mike Riley said goodbye to Dee Riley on Thursday.

So did about 150 friends and family members who attended a memorial service for the woman who served as Mike’s co-pilot for 43 years.

Dee Riley died on June 22 after a long, slow duel with dementia. (The family isn’t sure of cause of death; autopsy results are pending.) Her service Thursday was held at Common Fields in downtown Corvallis, an open-air facility featuring food carts and adult beverages. Dee was religious, but the family chose a more casual atmosphere over a church setting.

“It’s the way Dee would have wanted it,” Mike said.

There were many familiar faces in the crowd of folks who converged to pay tribute to Mike’s wife. Their children, Kate Dillon and Matt Riley, and grandchildren Eli and Cici were on hand. Mike’s brothers, Ed and Pete Riley, came in from Washington.

Many of Mike’s players during his 14 years coaching at Oregon State showed, including James Rodgers, James Dockery, Howard Croom and Damola Adeniji, Tim Euhus, Kyle Devan, Ryan Gunderson (and wife Hilary, who worked for Riley at OSU and Nebraska) and Trent Bray. Ex-Beaver grid greats Craig Hanneman and Steve Coury were there. So were equipment guys Steve “Lightning” McCoy and Arnie Alcantar. OSU Hall of Fame coach Pat Casey was, too. And his brother, Chris Casey, along with other Linfield connections Ad and Don Rutschman and Ed Langsdorf. And Billy Devaney, who worked with Mike with the San Diego Chargers and New Jersey Generals and at Nebraska, and Dan Van De Riet, Riley’s chief of staff for 14 years.

Many Corvallis High teammates were there, including Gary Beck, Donny Reynolds, Dean Roberts, Jerry Hackenbruck, Steve Allen, Mike Helberg, Ken Maddox, Dave Evenson and Dave Woelfle. And their football coach, Chuck Solberg. And playoff opponent quarterbacks Scott Spiegelberg (Medford) and Dean Fouquette (Pendleton).

“The most emotional part of the day for me is to see all the people who came here to honor my Mom,” Kate said.

“This means a lot to see everybody,” Riley told the group when he took the microphone late in the day. “One of the great parts of this is for you to get the chance to see each other.”

Many of those were on hand to show respect for their good friend Mike. But the day was about Dee, the beloved wife of Mike, the beloved mother of Kate and Matt, the beloved friend of so many.

After 90 minutes of food, drink and conversation, an informal program began. Rocky Bigbie — a close friend of the Rileys who lives in Stillwater, Okla. — served as an emcee of sorts. Over the next two hours, there were stories and remembrances and reflections and laughs, and a few tears.

Long-time friend Rocky Bigbie, who served as unofficial emcee for Thursday’s memorial service, knew Dee well before he knew Mike

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Delia Jean Thompson — at some point, it was shortened to “Dee” — grew up in Birmingham, a southern belle with a delightful demeanor. One of her close friends was Terry Holland (now Schlitz). They became pals at Banks High.

“She had to go to Woodlawn one year, but she came back,” says Schlitz, who made the trip to Oregon for Dee’s service with husband Randy from her home in Birmingham. “We were pretty much best friends. She was happy-go-lucky, always smiling. We had a ‘Miss Contrails’ beauty pageant and she was named ‘Miss Congeniality’ her senior year. Everybody loved her.”

Dee and Terry both went to the University of Alabama.

“My husband (Randy Schlitz) went to high school with us, too, but he went to Auburn,” Terry says.

At Alabama, Dee and Terry became sorority sisters at Alpha Chi Omega. Dee served four years as a “Bear Girl,” showing recruits around the campus for Crimson Tide Coach Bear Bryant.

“Dee was head Bear Girl as a senior,” Terry recalls. “She got her tuition paid for. She made a great impression on everyone.”

“That was the only way she could afford to go to Alabama,” Mike Riley says. “Her family didn’t have much money. She was going to go to Jacksonville State.”

Terry was among a small group of young women who were on hand when Mike and Dee Riley met — Mike’s sophomore year, Dee’s freshman year, courtesy of Mike’s teammate, Alabama quarterback Robert Fraley.

former Alabama quarterback Robert Fraley, who took Dee to her sorority house dance, was responsible for getting Dee and Mike Riley together (courtesy Mike Riley)

“Robert knew everybody,” Mike says. “He knew all the girls, all the sororities. I didn’t even know the names of the sororities. As football players, we didn’t do much. We lived in Bryant Hall. We had curfews. We had study hall. During free time, we played pickup basketball or went to the movies. We didn’t meet many other students, much less girls. It was a pretty isolated life.

“Robert decided he was going to change that. He was friends with Dee. He reached out to her and told her to get a group of four or five girls from the sorority and he would get a group of four or five guys and we would start doing stuff together. There was no real dating or couples; we just got together.”

Dee was a tennis player. Mike didn’t play the game. But once he found out Dee played, he took a sudden interest.

“We ended up playing some tennis together,” he says. “That became an early connection. She had fun with me. I was so messed up with which hand to hit the ball with. For the longest time, I never hit a backhand. I would switch from right to left hand when the ball went that way. She would laugh at me for it. She told that story to people for many years.”

Music was the other connector.

“We would get together, go listen to music, talk,” Mike says. “But we never were thought of as boyfriend/girlfriend by anybody. Dee was more in a relationship with one of my best friends, (safety) Ricky Davis, than me. She would call me after dates and we would chat about things. Long after marriage, she would tell people that we never dated. That’s a cute story, but it kind of hurt my feelings. I thought we were dating.”

Terry Schlitz remembers Riley as being “real shy.”

“Mike and I were friends,” she says. “For a while, Dee was going with Ricky Davis. We hung out with them. I took Mike to our (sorority) formal my junior year; Dee took Robert Fraley.”

After graduation from Alabama in 1976, Riley did a year as a grad assistant at California.

“When I was in Berkeley, Dee and I talked on the phone,” he says. “We stayed in touch. Not very often, because it wasn’t as easy in those days before cell phones.”

Mike sent her a Cal T-shirt that she kept forever — yellow with blue piping and a print of the “Sather Gate” on front.

The next year, Riley moved on to a grad assistant position at Whitworth, working on his Masters degree while coaching the secondary under Hugh Campbell.

“Dee came to visit me,” Mike says. “She stayed with the Campbells. Through that time, we talked about getting married. For a minute, we were engaged. I kind of put that on hold. I told her, ‘I’m living off peanut butter sandwiches.’ I was scared to death about not being about to provide.”

the first photo Mike ever took of Dee (courtesy Mike Riley)

In 1977, Riley got his first full-time coaching job, handling the secondary at Linfield. Dee came out for another visit, this time driving her orange Pinto across the country from Alabama with a couple of girlfriends.

“We had a great few days,” Mike says. “It was fun. But nothing happened there as far as a relationship. Then it went dark for more than a year. We never talked. I heard about her from time to time from former teammates. I heard she had a boyfriend.”

One day in 1980, Riley received a call from Terry Holland.

“Dee was not serious with anybody, but all these guys wanted to marry her,” she says. “I told Mike, ‘She loves you. You better call her.’ ”

Riley would think often about Dee.

“I had messed up a few relationships, including Dee’s from the time we had talked about marriage,” he says. “Then I thought, ‘What am I doing? This is the best friend, the best person I have ever been around.’ ”

On May 22, 1980 — four days after the eruption of Mount St. Helens — Mike called Dee.

“Happy birthday, Dee!” he opened with.

“Thanks,” she said, “but my birthday was May 2nd.”

“That was strike one,” Riley says now with a hearty laugh. “Strike two was, her boyfriend at the time was at her house having dinner.”

But Dee reached out shortly, and Mike invited her for a visit. She came to McMinnville in the summer of ’80.

“She bought her own plane ticket,” he says. “She wanted it to be on her own terms.”

Soon they got engaged, bought a house in McMinnville and were married in December of 1980.

Mike and Dee while Mike was coaching at Linfield, circa 1981 (courtesy Mike Riley)

Dee and Terry remained good friends.

“We tried to see each other at least once a year,” says Terry, who married Randy in 1983. “She has come here for visits and stayed with me. You know how it is with good friends. You don’t see each other for a while, but you pick up right where you left off.

“Dee was so fun and sweet. She was the perfect wife for Mike. As flaky as Dee was — people made fun of us because we were both blonde and a little ditzy — she was also very smart. Mike would be coaching and she could do anything. She loved meeting people. She was easy to talk to. She made his life easier. She took care of things. She would say, ‘I love him so much. He is sweet as ever.’ We would just laugh.”

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Mike, Irva Kay Neyhart, Irva’s friend Ed Lee and Dee (courtesy Irva Kay Neyhart)

Irva Kay Neyhart met Mike Riley at a reception at Steve Allen’s Corvallis home in 1997 shortly after he was hired as head coach for the first time. Neyhart was partner in a Corvallis accounting firm and later would serve as a volunteer on several OSU athletic boards, including a stint as president of Beaver Club (now called “Our Beaver Nation.”)

When Riley was head coach of the San Diego Chargers, and also for a year when he was associate head coach and defensive backs coach with the New Orleans Saints, the Rileys made their home in Seal Beach, Calif. After Mike was hired by the Beavers, Dee stayed with the children in Seal Beach until the end of the 1997-98 school year.

“Mike and I had a conversation (at the reception),” Neyhart says. “When we finished, he said, ‘When my wife gets to town, I would like you to meet her. I think you would like each other.’ ”

In June 1997, the Rileys and Neyhart had lunch, “and Dee and I just hit it off,” Irva says. “We became instant friends.”

It was an unusual friendship in a way.

“We were opposites in the things we liked,” Neyhart says. “I’m a numbers person and she was creative. I like new and she liked old. We didn’t have a lot in common. But we had the same sense of right and wrong and related to each other. She was fiercely in love with Mike, and I wanted to see Mike succeed.

“Dee was protective of her family, but especially Mike. That was our bond. She knew I had Mike’s best interests at heart all the time and I would fight for him all the time if I could. Theirs was a true love story. I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat to it.”

Dee and Irva found plenty to do.

“We traveled some together,” Neyhart says. “We walked together every day, miles and miles, shared meals and did a lot of talking. We did bible study together.

“Dee was genuinely a nice, caring person. I knew a lot about her and liked her heart. She loved me and made me a better person. We had each other’s back. Dee loved it when Mike and I would talk. The three of us would get together and she would say, ‘I love listening to you talk.’ ”

Dee and Irva resembled each other.

“People thought we were sisters,” Irva says. “If I showed up somewhere with the Rileys, they would assume I was her sister. I was mistaken a lot for Dee. People would come up and think I was Dee Riley. When I would tell Dee about it, she loved it. She would say, ‘Just be really nice to them. Make me look good.’

“I was there for good times and very challenging times. And when things got challenging for Dee, I was her confidante. I was one of the final people she knew who I was. I would walk in and she would get a smile on her face. We had that connection.”

Dee and Irva walked together until two weeks before Dee died, when she took a turn for the worse and lapsed into a coma.

“I was there every day, sitting with Mike and her until the final day,” Irva says. “I truly believe Dee gave Mike time for him to be ready for her to go. And then it was time not to see her suffer any more. That helped him get closure.”

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Bigbie, a retired veterinarian, told the people attending Thursday’s memorial service of his introduction to Dee, which came well before he met Mike. Bigbie was living in San Antonio and Mike had just been hired as head coach of the World League Riders in 1991. Dee was with her young children looking for a house to rent. She had a road map out when Bigbie approached and asked if he could help with directions. Bigbie and wife Laurie happened to be moving and had a place to rent.

“You should come look at it,” he told her, and she did.

Said Bigbie: “When I got out of college, I chased women like crazy and had no success. I met Dee and she went home with me the first night. I would always tease her about that, and she’d say, ‘Yes, but you told me your wife was at quilting class. No serial killer would make that up.’ ”

Bigbie said Dee was totally unassuming about being Mike Riley’s wife. One day he was watching the news on TV and Mike was being interviewed.

“All we knew was that her husband was a football coach,” Bigbie said. “I thought he was a high school coach. That tells you a lot about Dee.”

Dee could get her dobber up, though, if fans were criticizing the coach. During a game in San Antonio, a heckler was yelling at Riley to replace the quarterback.

“Finally she couldn’t take it any longer,” Bigbie said. “She stood up and told the guy, ‘You wouldn’t know a quarterback if he walked up next to you. Sit down and shut up.’ After she sat down, she said, ‘I cannot believe I just did that. Mike would not like that I did that.’ ”

So Rocky decided to pull a prank on her. A friend sent her what looked like a World Football League logo on letterhead of a letter that began “from the office of the commissioner.”

“Dear Mrs. Riley,” the letter read. “It has come to our attention that during Sunday’s game, with the camera on you and commentator Dick Vermeil saying, ‘This is Coach Riley’s wife in the stands,’ you turned on a fan with exuberant profanity. It was televised nationally.”

“I signed it ‘I.M. Lyon’ and copied Tom Landry (a part owner of the Riders) and Rush Limbaugh,” Bigbie said.

Rocky waited. No response. He asked his wife if Dee had mentioned the letter — negative. But unbeknownst to Rocky, Laurie had delivered a message to Dee: “Don’t say anything to Rocky about the letter. If you do, he wins. If he has to bring it up to you, you win.”

Finally, weeks later, Rocky could stay silent no longer.

“Did you ever have any repercussions from that tirade on the fan?” he asked.

Dee looked at him and smiled. “Gotcha. I win.”

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Chris Brasfield was an assistant coach and staff member under Riley at Oregon State and is now an assistant at Texas-Rio Grande Valley. When he interviewed with Mike, “I should have known something was different about him when we sat and talked for 3 1/2 hours,” he said. “Mostly, we talked about life.

“From that point forward, I realized that the Riley family was a special bunch,” Brasfield said. “When I met Dee, there was something about her spirit that was special to me. It was so genuine and it was consistent. She didn’t have to fake. It was just her being her authentic self.”

Brasfield said he once saw a quote that read, “I was taught to treat the janitor the same as the CEO.”

“That was Dee Riley,” he said. “It did not matter who you were. She was going to give you the same respect every single day.”

Brasfield used the letters of Dee’s name to spell out how he will remember her.

“ ‘D’ for dedicated to her family,” he said. “There is nothing she would not do to help her family be successful. Close friends, too. If you were in the circle of the Rileys, you would be included. ‘E’ is for exceptional person. If you can think of a better person who has walked the face of the earth, let me know. Dee Riley was just good people. The last ‘E’ is for everyone is welcome. That spirit gets to live on in each and every one of us.”

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The kids had their turn. Matt spoke first, reflecting on his mother’s determination and passion to raise her children right.

“She was the convicted, sometimes strict parent who gave up as much ground as she could without compromising her principles,” Matt said. “I remember begging her to let me watch MTV, despite knowing where she stood on the topic. It was the mid-‘90s and Tom Petty had a song in heavy rotation on the channel. Mom was familiar with the music and (agreed to) supervised music video watching sessions. She used it as a teaching opportunity to describe what was wrong and what was right about each.

“It speaks volumes about my mom’s qualities as a parent and effort to put in protecting us while allowing us to enjoy and take part in the world around us.”

Matt called his mother “exceedingly giving.” Once, his former wife complimented her on a shirt she was wearing.

“Dee ended up giving it to her right on the spot,” Matt said. “Lydia always said she was the only person she had met who would literally give her the shirt off her back.

“She was a great host and effortless in making you feel warm and comfortable when you were in our home or just spending time with her. Her warm nature shone through to the very end.”

Kate grew emotional in describing her relationship with Dee.

“She was my best friend,” Kate said. “There is no other way to put it. She was an amazing mom. As I became a mom and started to implement so many of the ways that she parented and loved us, it made it even more clear how good she was at what she did — at being a mom, at being a friend, at being a wife, at being a member of the community, at making everybody feel welcome.”

Kate called her mother “the classic Home Goods sign lady.”

“She had signs all over the house,” Kate says. “One of her favorites — and I was with her when she found it — was ‘Delighted You’re Here.’ She said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is how I feel. I need this by the front door.’ That was just her, to the T. She would be so delighted you are all here.”

In the last couple of years, until a caregiver was hired full-time in February, Kate and husband Mark Dillon served as primary caregivers.

“In the afternoons, Dad would come by and go for a walk with her,” Kate said. “They would get dinner, and then he would put her to bed. During the day, she was with us. It was a beautiful, wonderful system. I can only imagine she would be over the moon about it. She’d have been proud of us as a family for how we came together and supported each other as we went through some tough stuff.

“After she passed, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to grieve properly, that I would only remember her for how she was in the middle of her sickness. But I have instead this flood of good memories of who she was as my mom.”

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After the Riley children spoke, Kate’s friend Andrew Rappe played guitar and sang America’s “Sister Golden Hair.”

"I told Kate, ‘Darn you,’ ” Mike said later. “That was the most emotional part of the day for me. That was our song.”

During an open mic session, several people stepped up. One was Laurie McCorvey Retzlaff, a sorority sister of Dee’s at Alabama, now a resident of West Linn.

“She was like a ray of sunshine, everywhere she went,” Retzlaff said. “She glowed, she smiled, she laughed; she was special. We were all blessed that we had a sister like Dee. We will always hold that memory of her in our hearts.”

Donny Reynolds’ wife Jan lauded Dee’s ability as a coach’s wife.

“That job is not cut out for everybody,” Jan Reynolds said. “Dee was one of those exceptional women who on the one hand have the independence and wherewithal to hold down the fort while the team is on the road, while everything is about the season. And then also be that warm, gracious hostess to other coaches, players, their wives and girlfriends. It is a role not known to those who are not in that inner circle of coaching. She did it with grace and joy and light.”

Sarah Barbutto is a Corvallis therapist who lived with the Rileys for a spell as she was trying to get established and start a private practice.

“No one was a stranger to Dee,” Barbutto said. “I got there after she started her cognitive decline. I can tell you she was just as much a ray of sunshine even though her brain wasn’t the same. I watched her family love her and help her and take care of her every day.

“It was the most beautiful thing to see the way this family embraced her with such dignity and loved her so well with best intention in these incredibly non-glamorous phases of life because of who she was and how she lived.”

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The program ended with Mike’s thoughts. He spoke for about 90 minutes. It looked like he was ready to go another 90.

“This is the toughest speech I have ever had to make,” he said. “But it’s fun. I love looking back. I have been sitting around wondering, how do I get up here and do 50 years with the greatest person I have ever known in my life?

“I have had so many thoughts in the last couple of weeks, and it’s all good. What you remember is Dee’s sickness, but after everything that has happened, all these memories, and now seeing all you guys here today — those parts make me feel so good.”

Riley said he is grateful for the hundreds of texts, emails and phone messages he has received about Dee. He read some comments people have made, including the headline of a newspaper article in Nebraska: “The profound impact of Dee Riley.”

“That made me cry,” he said.

Joni Duff was an assistant for Riley at Nebraska.

“One day out of the blue, she says to me, ‘Hey Mike, your wife is the nicest person I’ve ever met,’ ” Riley said. “I never forgot that. A couple of months ago, I felt compelled to write her a note of thanks. Then after Dee passed, Joni wrote to me and said, ‘It did not matter if it was the chancellor of the university or the custodian, Dee treated everybody the same.’ That was just her. It was a beautiful thing.”

Dan Van De Riet served in various roles for Riley over 14 years at Oregon State, ending as chief of staff. His wife Sabrina wrote to Mike with a “letter to Dee” after her death.

“Miss Dee, the best person I have ever met,” she wrote. “You taught me it was OK to say ‘I love you’ to people who are not family, because this world could use a little more love. Friends can be family, too. You always greeted us and said goodbye with a hug and a squeeze and an ‘I love you’ with it.”

Mike added his own reflection: “Dee helped define me. We did everything together, and we navigated a ton. With her, you always had that rock.”

He reminisced about the good times visiting their vacation home in Greune, Texas, playing tennis and floating down the river with their kids and dog. They would go to Greune Hall to listen to live music.

The Rileys during good times (courtesy Mike Riley)

“We danced a little but mostly listened to country music,” Mike said. “She taught me how to do the Texas two-step. ‘Slow, slow; quick quick. Slow, slow; quick quick.’

“Dee was so simple. It didn’t take much to make her happy. She liked the little things. That was her.”

Dee was practical. The year after they were married in 1980, it occurred to Mike that they hadn’t gone on a honeymoon. Mike asked Dee if she would like to have one.

“I would rather have a couch,” she said.

“At Linfield, we didn’t have much,” Mike said. “But we were happy. We thought we had everything.”

Through the years, Dee’s intestinal fortitude and warm personality came out.

“She was all in as a wife and as a mother — maybe smothering, but she was going to make sure it was right,” Mike said. “And boy did she love the teams. She loved the games. She loved it when we won. All those years of coaching, she never said anything about football. She was more into how everybody felt. She loved gatherings. She loved to have people around. She especially loved kids. She’d be out in the backyard with all the kids running around.

“She was all about people. I am so thankful for that. She taught me what love is. She loved people. It was just who she was. She was Dee.”

The demise of Dee’s health, Mike told the group, was gradual, beginning as many as 15 years ago.

“At first, (the status of her health) was blurry,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, it was crystal clear. Something was up.”

Over time, Dee couldn’t read a book. She couldn’t watch a movie. She couldn’t talk on the phone. She could only drive for a short stretch, and then not at all. She could bowl, but she didn’t know how to keep score, or which lane to roll the ball in.

In Birmingham, when Mike was coaching the USFL Generals, Dee would wander out of his hotel room. Coaches of other teams would bring her to back to Mike.

“Her condition gave everybody a gift, the opportunity to get out of the box and be kind,” he said.

Over the final five months of Dee’s life, Stephanie Garcia was an in-home full-time caregiver.

“She is family,” Mike said. “We will forever be grateful.”

As he ended his talk, Riley encouraged the listeners to “give somebody a ‘Dee hug.’ You can add an ‘I love you’ if you want.”

He smiled and had one more thought.

“I have a favorite day for the rest of my life,” he said. “It’s May 22nd.”

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